


(Red) Star Baker

by steebadore



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Baking, Fluff, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Steve is terrible at constructive criticism, The Great British Bake Off, we do not speak of Civil War in this house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 05:03:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13967868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steebadore/pseuds/steebadore
Summary: The one where Bucky gets super obsessed with The Great British Bake Off and tries to recreate all the technical bakes, to middling success.





	(Red) Star Baker

**Author's Note:**

> hello and thank you for reading this, my first ever Stucky fic. Is this betaed? No, as I do not yet know anyone in this fandom. Sorry! Did I write it while high off my gd face on cold meds and watching The Great British Bake Off? Yes. Yes I did. So apologies in advance if this is a) not great, b) incoherent. Okay, super let's do this.

“Steve!” Bucky calls frantically from the kitchen. “The music!”

Steve heaves a sigh and reaches for his phone, pressing the button to play the song that sounds to Steve like an anxiety attack put to music, all frenetic violins and, inexplicably, a tambourine. 

Fourteen minutes and forty-seven seconds later, Darcy and Clint crash through the door and head straight back to the kitchen where Bucky’s been doing god knows what for the last three hours. 

“Ten!”  
“Nine!”  
“Eight!”  
“Seven!”  
“Six!”  
“Five!”  
“Four!”  
“Three!”  
“Two!”  
“One!”

“Time’s up!” Darcy calls in an incredibly awful British accent. “Hands up, bring your bake up to the gingham altar.”

“Steve!” Bucky yells. 

Steve sighs and gets up from the couch, bracing himself for whatever he’s about to find in the kitchen. Sure, whatever Bucky had been baking all afternoon smelled alright, but after the last several weeks, Steve had learned that isn’t always indicative of the final product. Last week, Bucky had made something that looked suspiciously like a brain. Not that it wasn’t delicious—but after some of the horrors they’d found in the basements of Hydra bunkers, it’d been a little hard to choke down. 

He’d managed to eat nearly half of it, though. He wasn’t a monster. Plus, if he closed his eyes, it just tasted like strawberry pudding cake. 

This, though. This he was not in any way prepared for. 

“What…am I looking at?”

Bucky huffs from behind the marble island covered in a red and white checked tablecloth. His hair’s a mess of flyaways sticking out from the braid that tops his head like a crown. He’s sweaty, slightly out of breath, his cheeks pink and his mouth bitten and red, and Steve feels something in his chest go soft and lopsided at the sight of him. He’s beautiful, and unbearably, unfairly adorable in his green-splotched apron, with a crust of something—icing, maybe?—across one cheek. 

“It…uh, it looks great, Buck. What’s that, a volleyball court? Made of… fruit cake? Wow. Fancy.”

Bucky narrows his eyes. “It’s a tennis court, idiot. See the rackets?” He points to the things drawn in white icing that yes, from a…certain perspective, could resemble tennis rackets. 

“Oh, right. Of course. Sorry.”

He very deliberately does not meet Clint or Darcy’s eye as they crowd around the island to take a closer look at the fruit…cake of Bucky’s labor. 

“General appearance is a little messy,” Darcy says crisply. “I’d have liked to see sharper edges on the fondant and marzipan.”

“Kind of over-did it on the green food coloring, man. I don’t think that’s a color found in nature,” Clint says. 

Bucky is staring at his cake, his mouth twisted, chewing on his bottom lip like this ridiculous game of his was a life or death situation.

“Looks great to me, Buck! The net’s a little crooked, but that’s just realistic, right? Who’s ever seen a perfectly straight vo—tennis net? Not me. Depends on wind conditions, actually. So, probably it was a windy day in this town. Wherever that might be. England?” He dares a glance at Darcy and Clint, who are gaping at him. “Are we supposed to be in England somewhere? England is..windy…” he trails off.

There’s a beat of silence while all three of them stare at Steve with indentical looks of incredulity. 

“Oh my god, Steve, you are the Paula Abdul of baking competitions right now,” Clint says in a voice that says he is three seconds from hysterical laughter. 

“I…have no idea what that means.” But he can guess it isn’t good, from the way the muscle in Bucky’s jaw is ticking. What? He was just trying to be supportive.

“Steve, if you can’t take this seriously then just don’t participate okay,” Bucky grits out. 

“Well, time to see how it tastes,” Darcy cuts in before Steve can respond with something guaranteed to end in two supersoldiers breaking a marble counter (again), reaching for the cake knife. She cuts a thick slab and then divides it in three, passing a plate to Clint and Steve.

“Dry as a bone,” Darcy comments sadly. “Probably could have done with five, ten minutes less in the oven.” 

Bucky winces and nods, his eyes shifting to Clint. 

Clint takes a bite and closes his eyes, humming around the fork. “It is dry, but the cake itself’s got good flavor. Marzipan is disappointing, though, I gotta say. Can barely taste the almond.”

Steve wonders what the fuck Clint knows about marzipan. And what exactly marzipan is, for that matter.

Bucky shoulders slump a little, and he turns warily to Steve, who is frantically trying to come up with a positive yet serious judgement on the frankly fucking weird creation he has in his mouth. 

“I like the cherries. And the uh… the tennis rackets have a good…crunch.”

Bucky looks at him blankly. “That’s it? Really?” he says in tone that clearly reads, _why do I even bother?_

“No! Uh, the cake reminds me of that bread your Ma used to make on Christmas, remember? S’good.” He takes another giant bite of the dry as hell cake to prove his point, and wonders how soon he can get a glass of water without it being obvious. 

Bucky’s mouth softens a bit at that. “You’re an idiot.” Steve grins and shrugs. No arguing that. 

“I swear to Christ I thought you guys were fucking with me on this one. How is this a real thing?”

Darcy laughs. “I’m still not sure it is. Clint and I have been dying all week thinking about your face when you opened the package. We almost asked Steve to take a stealth pic, but well, you know… it’s Steve, so.”

“Hey! What does that even mean?”

Darcy rubs his arm. “Nothing, sweetie.”

“I don’t know why you guys have to be so mean all the time,” Steve grumbles while super casually edging toward the sink for that glass of water he really doesn’t need because he’s definitely not in danger of turning into one of the many raisins he’s ingested in the last ten minutes.

***

When Darcy and Clint have gone, Bucky puts on last week’s episode and lays his head down in Steve’s lap, making himself comfortable and pressing a soft kiss to Steve’s thigh. They cringe simultaneously at the bakers on screen. Bucky hides his face against Steve’s stomach when his favorite contestant, Matt decides to put his royal icing tennis court and rackets in the oven to dry them faster. 

“Oh no,” he mutters under his breath. “Matt, no.”

“This looks like a tennis court in Hades,” one of the judges says at sight of the yellowed, melting tennis court on top of a slab of fruit cake. 

“See? You yell at me when I’m just being supportive but at least I’m not mean like they are,” Steve says, a little indignant on Matt’s behalf.

“That’s the whole point, Steve! You’re judging—be judgemental. That’s the game.”

“So I should have said I’m pretty sure I’m critically dehydrated after two bites of that thing? Might need to go down to medical for some fluids,” he gets out before Bucky pops him in the face with a couch cushion.

“Seventy years of super soldier serum, bested by one dry as fuck fruit cake volleyball court. You should be proud, Buck,” Steve gasps. 

“You don’t have to be fuckin’ rude about it, pal,” Bucky says through hysterical giggles, punctuating each word with another pillow to Steve’s face. Steve rolls them off the couch, pinning a squirming, giggling Bucky under him. 

“Bucky, Bucky listen,” Steve says seriously, running his noise up Bucky’s neck where he still smells like sugar and vanilla. “You know you’ll always my star baker no matter what, right?”

“Ugh, get off me, you punk. Lemme watch my show.”

They clamber back onto the couch, Bucky sprawling over Steve’s chest and grabbing his hand to put it in his hair, a silent request to take his braids out. Steve hums as he gently removes the pins, carding his fingers through the cool, thick waves as they watch the rest of the show. 

He still doesn’t really get it. When he’d become obsessed with the Great British Bake Off a few weeks ago after watching exactly one (1) episode in the tower common room with Darcy and Clint, Steve’d been surprised. 

When he’d taken it a step further and asked Clint and Darcy to help him recreate the Technical Bake each week—watching the previous week’s episode and sourcing the ingredients and recipe, and then dropping them off Sunday morning for Bucky to decipher in a strict time limit, then judge the results as critically as possible—Steve had been confused. As far as he knows, Bucky’s never baked a day in his hundred years.

He can’t quite understand the appeal of spending every Sunday stressing for hours in a hot kitchen over increasingly ridiculous baked goods, and Steve certainly doesn’t understand what the hell he’s supposed to say during the “judging” but it doesn’t matter. 

Every Sunday, Bucky cackles madly with Darcy and Clint as they clean the kitchen and plan next week’s horror show. And any minute now, he’ll fall asleep draped across Steve, exhausted from the day’s work and smelling like sugar, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. And he won’t have any nightmares tonight. 

That’s enough for Steve. Even if the thought of what lies in store for him next week chills him to the bone.


End file.
